Vol. 0 – Press Start: The Origin Story (198x–199x)
“Everything big starts with something small.”
🕹️ Insert Coin
Before the certifications, the cloud migrations, and the enterprise architectures, there was just curiosity. And usually, a joystick.
This isn’t a record of professional achievements. It’s the backstory. It’s about how a childhood fascination with glowing screens and 8-bit soundtracks evolved into a lifelong career. It’s about the moment the magic trick was revealed, and I realized that someone built this—and that I could build things too.
� Channel UHF 31: The Awakening
It started with a gift. I was about 9 or 10 years old when a Hanimex 888 Pong console entered the living room.
The Hanimex 888: The first interface.
Connecting it to our black-and-white cathodic TV required fiddling with an antenna cable and tuning specifically to Channel UHF 31. But when the static cleared and the simple white lines appeared, it was magic.
The idea that I could manipulate what was happening on the television screen was revolutionary. It wasn’t just a broadcast anymore; it was interactive. The console offered simple variations—single player, double player—and even included a toy gun for shooting games on the screen.
The graphics were primitive blocks of light, but the impact was profound. I was blown away. That simple interaction planted the seed: screens weren’t just for watching; they were for controlling.
📼 The Videopac Alternative
The next step in the evolution was a shared gift for my brother and me: the Philips Videopac G7000.
The Philips Videopac G7000: A lesson in market fragmentation.
In reality, this was the European version of the Magnavox Odyssey². We had spent months begging our dad for an Atari VCS or a Mattel Intellivision—the titans of the era—but we ended up with the Videopac.
While it was a capable machine, it taught me an early lesson in ecosystem lock-in. It wasn’t as successful as its competitors, which meant one tragic reality for a kid in the 80s: it was nearly impossible to find friends to swap cartridges with. We were on an island.
I vividly remember the regret of not having access to the massive library of games available for those platforms, especially the hits from third-party pioneers like Activision. But the biggest heartbreak was missing out on Tron. The movie was a colossal deal at the time, defining the visual language of the digital world. While others were racing Light Cycles on their Ataris, I was left on the outside looking in.
Like the Hanimex before it, it connected via the RF antenna cable, taking over the TV signal. It even had a membrane keyboard, hinting at “computer” capabilities, though its programming potential was extremely limited. It was a bridge between a pure console and a computer, even if it wasn’t the one we had asked for.
🐐 The GOAT: Commodore 64
Then came the machine that defined a generation. With the classic excuse of “needing it for studying,” we convinced our dad to buy us a Commodore 64.
The Commodore 64: The best-selling home computer of all time.
It was an incredible step up from the old consoles. The graphic capabilities, the legendary SID chip for audio, and the availability of tape cassettes and disk drives took our experience to the next level.
At its heart beat the MOS Technology 6510, a modified version of the famous 6502. While it ran at just 1 MHz, it was a marvel of efficiency. It wasn’t just a processor; it was the conductor of an orchestra that included the VIC-II for graphics and the SID for sound, creating an architecture that punched well above its weight class.
It wasn’t just a gaming machine; it was a full computer. It was where we built our first skills, typing in BASIC programs from magazines or using POKE commands to cheat in games (infinite lives!). It taught us the fundamental operations of computing: loading, saving, and managing files.
The hypnotic multicolored loading bars |
The art of adjusting the tape head azimuth |
Even the hardware quirks were a lesson. We spent heaps of time staring at the typical multicolored bars of the loading screen, screwdriver in hand, trying to fine-tune the azimuth of the tape unit’s read head to get a game to load.
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" : 20 GOTO 10
In a time when PCs were still beige boxes limited to offices, the C64 felt like being at the cutting edge of the personal computer revolution. We had full color, animated sprites, and a library of software that seemed endless.
And perhaps most importantly, there was the deep satisfaction of having made the right choice in the great playground war of the 80s: Commodore 64 vs. ZX Sinclair Spectrum. A rivalry that dominated discussions among friends, but looking back, I know we picked the winner.
This technical revolution wasn’t happening in a vacuum. The culture around us was exploding with the promise of home computing. Movies like WarGames (with its mythical “Tic-Tac-Toe” scene and the WOPR computer) and The Last Starfighter fueled our imaginations, convincing us that the keyboard in our bedroom was a gateway to something much bigger—maybe even saving the world.
🎨 The 16-Bit Revolution: Amiga 500
When the Commodore 64 finished its long, successful run, it was time to step up again. Our choice could not be anything else but the Amiga 500 (with memory expansion, of course).
The Amiga 500: A quantum leap in multimedia.
Once again, the playground was divided. This time, the battle lines were drawn between the Amiga and the Atari ST. And once again, we made the right decision.
The step up was immense. We moved from an 8-bit world to a 16/32-bit powerhouse driven by the legendary Motorola 68000 processor. It featured a fully graphical, real operating system—the Amiga Workbench—and possessed graphical and sound capabilities that were lightyears ahead of anything else on the market.
The iconic hand holding the Workbench disk.
This was the moment when 5.25” floppy disks and cassette tapes began to disappear, replaced by the sleek, rigid 3.5” disks. It was also the moment when video games matured into a real industry. We saw the arrival of heavy-hitting, cinematic productions from studios like Cinemaware, MicroProse, and Origin.
It was a fantastic time to be a computer user. The PC was still playing catch-up, stuck with beeping internal speakers and limited palettes, while the Amiga was delivering arcade-perfect ports and multimedia experiences that felt like the future.
� The PC Era: Optimizing the Machine
The next chapter was inevitable. Thanks to the advent of the Intel 8088 and x86 architectures, the PC finally became relevant in the home. We decided to take the leap.
Of course, we had an initial misstep—again, thanks to our dad—and ended up with a Honeywell SuperTeam featuring a green monochrome monitor.
The Honeywell SuperTeam: A humble beginning in the PC world.
But we rectified it immediately. We started building our own custom PCs, upgrading them constantly in a never-ending chase for performance. This was the golden era of hardware evolution: moving from a 386/40 to a 486 DX2/66, then to a 486 DX4/100, and beyond. We mapped the graphic evolution in real-time, upgrading from CGA to EGA, then to VGA, and finally SVGA. We witnessed the advent of the Sound Blaster card (finally, real audio on a PC!) and the emergence of the CD-ROM, followed later by the DVD.
The art of memory management: config.sys |
The DOS Shell interface |
But the real skills were built in the software. Our ability to optimize the MS-DOS operating system improved dramatically after long hours spent tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat. The goal was always the same: free up as much “conventional memory” as possible from the 640K constraint to get our games to run.
We became experts in tools like emm386.exe, learning the deep internals of the OS and the underlying hardware. We learned how to set specific jumpers on the motherboard to enable or disable features, refining our knowledge through countless hours of trial and error.
The legendary blue panels of Norton Commander.
The DOS Shell and later the legendary Norton Commander became our command centers—the normal way to manage files and operations. It was a glorious time of manual optimization, where you really had to know your machine to get the most out of it.
🌐 The Connected World: Dialing In
The move to the PC didn’t just bring better graphics and more processing power; it opened the door to the world outside. Or at least, it tried to, one screeching handshake at a time.
The sound of anticipation: A US Robotics Sportster modem.
We started exploring the concept of “online” through the humble modem. It began with slow speeds, measuring bandwidth in baud, and the constant struggle to upgrade to the next tier—14.4k, 28.8k, 33.6k, and finally the holy grail of 56k.
In the mid-90s, before the Internet was a household utility, we were dialing into BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems). We spent our nights connecting to local legends like Antanisoft and Atomica BBS.
The underground network: Antanisoft BBS.
It was a strict economy. You couldn’t just take; you had to give. Maintaining a healthy Upload/Download ratio was the currency of the realm. If you wanted that new shareware utility or image, you had to contribute something back. And all of this happened while the household phone line was held hostage, leading to the inevitable shouts from family members trying to make a call.
Then came the ISPs and the dawn of the real Internet. We jumped on board with MC-link, which was more than just a provider; it was a community.
MC-link: From forums and Gopher to the World Wide Web.
Initially, it was a walled garden of forums and chats, with limited access to the outside world via Gopher. But soon, the World Wide Web arrived, and everything changed. The speed increased, the walls came down, and the way we played, consumed media, and worked was transformed forever.
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We weren’t just kids playing with toys anymore. We were witnessing the birth of the digital age, and we were ready.
🎮 The Games That Defined Me
Of course, none of this hardware would have mattered without the software that brought it to life.
Click here to view the gallery of games that defined this era.
🚀 Level Up: The Transition
By 1999, the hobby had outgrown the bedroom. The LAN parties, the hardware tinkering, and the endless troubleshooting had built a foundation of problem-solving that no textbook could teach.
The “Game Over” screen for childhood was just the “Press Start” screen for a career.
Hidden Track / Volume 0